​Inspired by Cezanne's painting Tulips in a Vase the Doodlebugs followed step by step and drew and painted their own gorgeous floral arrangement! They used watercolour resist techniques to create the cool texture effects and learned a bit about light and shadows!

This was fun to create but it also is just so beautiful! Hooray for my talented little artists!

Last week the Picassos looked at the struggles of Horace Pippin and his determination to get back to painting after injuring his arm. (He took 3 years to complete his first painting after his injury!) They created pictures of themselves sitting at their easels and imagined what they would be painting and conjured up their fantasy bedrooms/art studios! See the first part of this lesson here.

The Picassos were introduced to the artist Horace Pippin and I used the book A Splash of Red to tell the story of his life and give them an idea of the man and his art. Horace overcame his poor upbringing and even survived a war albeit with an injured arm but none of that could keep him away from his love of art! He found a way to prop his injured arm so he could still draw and he worked and worked until it got stronger and he was brave enough to exhibit his paintings even though he had no formal art training and his work eventually made him famous!

This story is meant to highlight that everyone's journey is different and really gives the children a chance to be quiet and imagine. (Something that can get lost in a world full of distractions!)

They looked at some pictures of his art and then they started drawing from their imaginations... which is what Horace did! They all started off with the shape of an easel on their paper and they were tasked to imagine the rest of the art piece. What would they be painting on their easel? What would their room look like? Take a look at the start of their imagination pieces... Next week they'll complete them with paint!

This is such a ridiculously fun little book that it is hard to imagine it getting any better, but when it's put to song and you throw in a few big dinosaur toys in the mix for props... then you get a class that is truly a riot!

The Doodlebugs were dancing and jumping but they all took a good look at the different dinosaurs, especially my resident dinosaur expert! Then we got down to painting a scene from the Dinosaur Stomp!

Take a look at our adorable dancing dinos! I'll say... that was a nice way to spend a Saturday morning :)

As turtle nesting season approaches I thought we could use our art to draw attention to the plight of the amazing leatherback turtles that grace our shores each year. The Picassos took in this video and we talked a bit about

how big they are - they can grow up to 7 feet long and weigh up to 2000lbs!

the fact that they come from as far away as the Atlantic Ocean

they lay about 80 eggs at a time

and the dangers that they face from predators for their eggs as well as threats from careless humans.

The Picassos read from an article on these creatures and then we got down to creating our art piece! They used a few of their well-practiced watercolour techniques and created some gorgeous art pieces! Take a look at them hard at work :)

While you're here be sure to check out what we're up to for Easter Art Camp!

The Picassos finished their watercolour President's Houses and I have to say they took great pride in the process. I was happy to hear questions throughout like "should I use the wet-on-wet technique for the sky?" and "hmm... how would I get a creamy colour for the walls?"... experiment my little Picassos experiment. And that's just what they did!

My Thursday afternoon Picassos finished their President's House paintings today! They really took their time and they buddied up to mix different tints and shades of green :)

The Doodlebugs drew and painted an under water seascape today! They got to put in whatever they could think of that would belong under water today and boy were they happy about that :) They looked at the little video to get some ideas and also to expand their view of what fish can look like and then talked about what they would put in their picture.

The shapes of some of these fish are just wondrous... lol and I just let them have fun because let's face it there are some pretty funky looking fish out there anyway!

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I personally love to paint buildings (especially old houses and buildings with lots of character), so in honour of Republic Day we're turning our attention to President's House.

Of course we touched on what it means to be a republic and why this is different from being independent. A lot of my Picassos got the connection between becoming a republic state and the significance of the President as our Head of State instead of the Queen and they were very happy to show off their knowledge from school today at art class :)

So anyway... onto our art for today! They followed a directed line drawing of President's House (after looking at pictures of the real thing). I banned rulers today... I wanted the drawing to be free flowing and loose and didn't want them to get too caught up in struggling with lines, and of course developing those fine motor skills and steadying the hand is a nifty side-effect of that. They were also forced to focus on scale and proportion today.
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​ Next week we'll paint and really bring this piece to life!

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Today the Doodlebugs got introduced to the artist Claude Monet. We took a look at this cute little story about Monet's garden and then we looked at 2 pictures for a little compare and contrast fun!

I asked the Doodlebugs what they noticed about these 2 paintings and guided them along to discover that one painting was clear while the other was all blurry. A very basic first step towards appreciating art periods but they were keen to shout out the things they saw and what they liked!

Then we went about trying to recreate the blurry effect in our own little Monet-inspired painting! Take a look at our stunning watercolour creations!